Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Fear not, gentle readers! I did manage to finish my homemade
chainsaw for my Bruce Campbell costume. I finished it the morning of my
Halloween party! I cut it a lot closer than I should have, but my first
semester of grad school was hectic! As much as I enjoyed doing schoolwork every
waking hour for months on end, I’m pleased to have a break now. (My Halloween
party was the last day I had where I didn’t do any work before finals week
ended.)

To finish up my papier-mâché chainsaw, I did a lot more
sanding, added more layers of newspaper, and primed the surfaces for painting.
I made a little toggle switch out of a nut, washer, and a pin. For the knobs, I
cut down the lids from 2 liter bottles. The pull handle was just papier-mâché over
a plastic core and a string. Painting the chainsaw arm didn’t take too long,
and I just used cheap craft paint. I painted the metallic parts gray first and
then added silver over the top. When I finished painting, I added all the
screws.

The best part was adding all the blood and gore over the
top! I poured a combination of brown and red paint on my hands and applied the
paint with extreme care and diligence. It’s a good thing I’m going to college
for painting, right?

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

My papier-mâché Army of Darkness chainsaw is taking a lot longer
to make than I anticipated. This is probably because I am bogged down with
homework most of the time and don’t have the free time to work on Halloween
stuff as much as I like. I know I’m going to be cutting it pretty close this
year!

I added the handle to the top, and I also added the little
bendy bar on the side. For the part on the side, I took a sturdy piece of
plastic tube and cut it into smaller pieces with a pipe cutter. I ran a thin
piece of wire in the middle and duct taped all the parts in place. I also added
the cuff on the back, which was originally the cardboard center of a role of
packing tape. My husband is a little upset that he can’t fit his hand inside of
the opening, and he doesn’t appreciate me teasing him about his truckasaurus
hands!

Monday, October 28, 2013

Ash and I went to the temporary Halloween store at the mall
recently just to see what decorations we’ll want, decide are too expensive, and
then not buy. There was a lot of creepy clown stuff this year, and zombie
babies are still available. However, the best thing I saw was a big, hairy
spider by the entrance with a mat labeled, “Step here!”

If I let this spider bite me, will I get super powers or will I just be super itchy?

Ash loathes spiders, especially the ones that try to sneak
into our house. So, of course, I told him to step on it. He said, “You step on
it” and started to make his way to the Doctor Who section. I had to
step on it. At first it just vibrated a little, and I thought that was
pathetic, so I turned to follow Ash. Just as I turned, this beast lunged at me
incredibly fast and startled me! Ash got a good laugh at my expense, but he
said we couldn’t buy it. First of all, it was $50, and I don’t have a job since
I’m in grad school now. Secondly, I bet he thinks I would just hide it in
various places around our home to frighten him.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Why, oh why, is it that costume makers think that when women
dress up as male characters, they want costumes that are extremely nude and
stripper-esque? Ash and I went to a Halloween store and I was left with many
questions. Why can’t women just wear the regular Ghostbusters flight suit and
be a regular Ghostbuster? Instead, the female costume is a little dress
designed to show as much leg and boob as possible. I really don’t think that
tiny dress would be appropriate for fighting Gozer and climbing many flights of
stairs. A woman can’t just wear a regular Beetlejuice costume either! Oh no!
She has to wear a microscopic dress that only hints at Beetlejuice because it
has black and white stripes.

No, Sir, I don't like it.

Is this because the person wearing the costume wants to make
sure that everyone knows she is in fact female, and the only way to do this is
to make sure her breasts are on display for all to see? If this is that big of
a problem, I would think an easier solution to this conundrum would to be to just
dress as a female character or carry around a birth certificate with the gender
highlighted for all to see.

I haven’t noticed this phenomenon happening with men’s
costuming. When a man wants to be a female character, he doesn’t wear a
slapped-together tragedy of a costume with strategic cutouts that showcase his
testicles. Wouldn’t that be a great sight? Imagine a man in a Power Girl
costume with extra cutouts, or a man could wear a Super Girl costume with a
skirt short enough to give everyone a peek at his anatomy to assure everyone
that he is a man.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Ash was pretty excited the last time we shopping because he
found superhero stickers! He was happy because the Flash and Green Lantern were
included. What he will do with them, I have no idea, but they sure brightened
his day. He said, “Even the Aquaman sticker is cool!”

Sunday, September 1, 2013

I like papier-mâché a lot. I like papier-mâché a lot more
than an adult probably should. When a friend of mine called to tell me that she
was planning a surprise party for her husband’s 30th birthday, I
immediately offered to make a piñata for the very grown up and classy affair!
She wanted to have a Simpsons themed party, so I created a Homer piñata of
course!

Since I tend to go overboard when I play with papier-mâché,
I had to keep telling myself that it didn’t have to be perfect since I was
building it to be destroyed. It’s wasn’t a perfect piñata, but it was good
enough to house chocolate, plastic dinosaurs, and squirt guns.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

The new Doctor was announced recently. My husband first told
me about the new actor, but I didn’t see a picture of him until my friend
Lindsay posted one. She posted it adjacent to an old photograph of her Grandpa
Ed, and I have to admit that there is a good resemblance!

Monday, August 5, 2013

I despise moving because I hate going through old stuff. I
usually start off strong and everything is packed and organized neatly, but
then as the moving date gets closer, I just throw all the remaining items in
boxes and let my future self deal with it. After I move, I realize past me is a
jerk and I refuse to unpack her stuff.

This is probably why I have boxes of items that haven’t seen
the light of day in years. This could also explain why I also had a stack of
old floppy disks! I don’t even have a computer that can read them. I can’t even
remember the last time I used one. Perhaps one day future archaeologists will
unearth these disks from the landfill and find what mysteries they behold!

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

I added a few more layers of papier-mâché to the exterior of
my Army of Darkness cardboard chainsaw.
I’m at the point where I can spend hours working on adding layers of newspaper
without seeing a lot of progress. I think my husband is happy I’m working on it
because he can play video games without me interrupting him while I’m sculpting!

The handle inside is thicker, but I don’t want to build too
much too fast because I want to make sure everything has a chance to dry all
the way. I also need to start thinking about how I’m going to make the back of
the chainsaw. I didn’t cut any pieces for it yet because I wanted to get the
inside done first. I should also start looking for screws and paint, but I don’t
want to get too ahead of myself.

Monday, July 29, 2013

Cutting out the cardboard pieces for my papier-mâché chainsaw
wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I know I’ll need to cut out more
parts later, but I wanted to get the pieces I have ready glued together before I
got the chance to lose them.

Check out that powerful blade - it might cause a paper cut!

Since I needed to make sure the interior of my chainsaw is
hollow and big enough to for me to put my hand inside, I doubled up the
cardboard where I could to try to help maintain the shape because watery papier-mâché
paste likes to make cardboard distort. I also had to worry about the chainsaw
blade part warping since cardboard likes to curl, so I triple layered the
thickest cardboard I could find. I also put the outer pieces back-to-back with
the hopes that if they try to curl, they’ll cancel out each other.

Thank goodness for tape

... lots, and lots of tape!

I couldn’t just use glue to hold everything together, so I
used tape and some straight pins. I also cut up a few wooden popsicle sticks to
create the vent thingy on the side. Since I already had the craft sticks out,
and I was way too lazy to search for any new supplies, I wedged 2 sticks inside
for a handle to grasp. Once I got everything I had ready assembled, I added the
first layer of papier-mâché. I know I’m going to have a lot more work to do,
but I think I’m off to a good start!

Sunday, July 28, 2013

To begin my homemade chainsaw project, I tried to find as
many pictures as I could of the chainsaw from the movie or unaltered chainsaws
so I could see what I was getting into. The chainsaws in Evil Dead, Evil Dead II,
and Army of Darkness were all
different, and I decided I wanted to make an Army of Darkness style one since that’s my favorite movie.

Chainsaw sketches

After my grueling research of looking up pictures of Bruce
Campbell on the internet, I made preliminary sketches to see if this was a
project I could handle. When I completed the sketches, I wanted to make scale
drawings from 4 different angles. Unfortunately, I had a rough time trying to
figure out how large to make my chainsaw prop. Perhaps my chainsaw vocabulary
was lacking in my searches, so I just decided to estimate by seeing how large
the chainsaw was in comparison to Bruce Campbell. Since I’m a bit shorter, I
know my prop will be smaller, but that’s okay because it will be to scale for
me.

Chainsaw drawings to scale

I then used my life-sized drawing to create
patterns, which I traced onto cardboard. When I made the proton pack, I learned
that if I had any hollow spaces they would warp and sag due to the moisture in
the paste, so I did my best to avoid empty spaces this time. Instead of
creating boxes, I cut out many layers to stack so everything will be solid. It
took me quite awhile to cut everything out, but I think it was worth it. Gluing
everything together should be a challenge!

Saturday, July 27, 2013

I don’t know what I was thinking, but for some reason I got
the idea that I need a chainsaw hand like Bruce Campbell’s in Army of Darkness. Perhaps it was because
friends have been asking me what the theme for Halloween will be this year. Maybe
I’m a little jealous of my friends who recently went to a zombie festival this
summer. It could also very well be that my Army
of Darkness is now hung in my living room, and I spend too much time on the
sofa.

Anyway, I decided I must have a chainsaw hand. I poked
around online to see if I could just buy one, but I could only find Texas Chainsaw Massacre toys at first,
which obviously weren’t good enough. Then, I found some people make their own chainsaws
out of juice containers. Those looked okay for people who needed to slap together
an Ash Halloween costume, but it wasn’t for me. After that, I found that there
are people who buy old chainsaws and refit them to make them look screen
accurate. While those chainsaw props look awesome, I know that I don’t have the
money or resources to make one. I am also pretty scrawny and I don’t think I’d
like to haul around a heavy chainsaw. I eventually discovered
EvilDeadChainsaws.com, which is pretty amazing. There are handmade prop
chainsaws available for sale, and they look great. They also cost over 500 pounds,
which I obviously don’t have.

So, I decided to return to my old friend papier-mâché! I
thought my husband’s papier-mâché proton pack I made was pretty snazzy, so I
decided to make a chainsaw using the same medium. Why did I decide to undertake
another big project? Part of it is because I love the Evil Dead movies, and part of it is just to see if can.

For the last year, my life has been so busy I just haven’t
had enough free time to poke fun at my husband and the things he loves as much
as I’d like. After Halloween last year, I pretty much painted nonstop when I
wasn’t at work in order to beef up my portfolio so I could apply to graduate
school in January.

I was ill most of the winter, which wasn’t a lot of fun. So,
I spent a lot of time indoors and feeling sorry for myself. If I wasn’t at work
or at the doctor’s office, I was probably at home watching Netflix.

In March, I found out I was accepted into graduate school full
time to study painting! I spent a good amount of time jumping for joy considering
that I was one of the 12 new students in the entire MFA program! I had to find
a new place to live, pack up all of our belongings, and resign from my job.

Ash and I moved to a new town at the end of June, and we’re
still not done unpacking. Ash loves the new place because it’s a basement
duplex and so the entire home is a dark, dank man-cave. Since we only have 4
windows total and we’re underground, he never has to worry about glare on the
TV screen while he plays video games and watches Doctor Who.

This is one of Ash's boxes I packed for him.

Unfortunately, Ash now has a very long drive to work now, so
I don’t get to see him as much as I’d like. On a positive note, I now have a
lot of time to myself and can once again spend more time playing on the
internet!